We've discussed the rise of the use of artificial intelligence AI quite a few times on this podcast and its application to our understanding of the First World War and many of

the issues around it in terms of accuracy, detail and exaggeration.

And I'm sure that is something that we will continue to do because we can't get away from

the fact that AI is becoming bigger and bigger and we're seeing it being used right across all kinds of platforms online to tell different stories, including those stories of the First World War.

But in this past week, I've seen the development of a number of new Facebook groups where they're telling stories from

the First World War that look on one level credible, but once you do a deep dive into them,

you quickly discover that they're completely made up. And there was one that stood out for me

this week, which was the story of a grave digger,

a civilian grave digger who was brought across to the Western Front to prepare and construct

and dig the graves of soldiers on the Somme battlefields in the lead up to and at the beginning

of the Somme offensive in July of 1916.

And it named this person, it named his wife.

He died in the process of creating the cemetery at a specific point that was symbolic.

And that was then relayed as a real story, claiming that the documents relating to what he'd done had been given to the Imperial

War Museum and was part of their archive. But as soon as you began to scratch the surface,

very quickly quite a few things stood out. For a start, civilians were not brought over to France

to work on, to prepare graves, to construct cemeteries.

There was no civilian workforce that was brought over to do that because there was an existing

workforce, soldiers, to do that very job.

And even if he had, and some civilians were brought to base areas like Ruan or a tarpler, and they died there.

So if this chap had actually died, then he would have Wargrave's commemoration and he would have a grave.

Now, considering that I've been travelling to the Somme battlefields for over four decades,

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